In many conventional semiconductor processing technologies, the end product is a semiconductor device. This device is conventionally characterized as an essentially flat wafer in its width and length dimensions and having layered properties in the height dimension. Accordingly the specific processing steps used to make these planar devices are typically performed using planar or linear motions. In this manner, most conventional semiconductor processing machinery employs solely planar motion (movement in the width and length) to make these integrated circuits (ICs).
In building the material up on a substrate in a conventional planar IC, such planar motions are employed to translate the substrate through an inline process. Further, great care is taken to ensure that material deposition only occurs in one height direction and on one surface of the IC.
In this manner, semiconductor processing steps can be performed on an assembly line basis with the various devices and/or substrates being translated through the various pieces of semiconductor machinery. As described herein, such semiconductor processing steps can include deposition steps such as physical deposition, chemical deposition, reactive sputtering deposition, or molecular beam epitaxy deposition. All variants of the preceding deposition families should be considered as such semiconductor processing steps.
It should be understood that these semiconductor techniques described are all well known and performed on a common basis with regards to semiconductor devices having planar features. Accordingly, the various layers that are created on the planar substrate and/or IC can be created easily, cheaply, and in a timely manner, but only if the corresponding semiconductor device is planar in nature.
Conversely, in current conventional practice, semiconductor manufacturing techniques and/or processing steps, such as deposition, evaporation, and scribing, although well known, are typically limited to operating on these substantially planar substrates. Further, conventional practice is typically limited to processing machinery that operates in such a linear or planar fashion.
For example, FIG. 1A shows an exemplary conventional sputter deposition chamber 10. Sputter deposition is a method of depositing thin films onto a substrate 11 by sputtering a block of source material 12 onto the substrate 11. Sputter deposition typically takes place in a vacuum. Sputtered atoms ejected into the gas phase are not in their thermodynamic equilibrium state, and tend to deposit on all surfaces in the vacuum chamber. A substrate (such as a wafer) placed in the chamber will be coated with a thin film of the source material 12. Sputtering typically takes place with argon plasma, or another inert gas in a plasma state, as well as the target material (i.e. a semiconductive material, a metallic material, or a buffer material.)
Another common method of deposition is evaporation deposition, as described with respect to FIG. 1B. The source material 12 is exposed to a high temperature such that the material is evaporated. This can take place in a vacuum, which more easily allows vapor particles to travel directly to the target substrate, where they condense back to a solid state.
The construction of a non-planar shaped device would be problematic using planar- or linear-based manufacturing devices. For example, if one wished to create a light-emitting diode on a tube (ostensibly to make a light source), such planar- or linear-oriented manufacturing devices would make its manufacture problematic (at the least). One solution to this problem of manufacturing semiconductors on non-planar substrates can be found in U.S. Patent Application No. 60/922,290 entitled “Method Of Depositing Materials On A Non-Planar Surface”, filed on Apr. 5, 2007.
Further, producing non-planar ICs in commercial quantities would be difficult, and not just due the problems inherent in these alternative manufacturing geometries. One would also have to scale to produce the alternative geometries in numbers in an efficient manner.
In the use of some conventional manufacturing technologies, the substrates are typically inserted into the semiconductor manufacturing system to be processed. However, when the semiconductor manufacturing system is opened, the external environment floods into the processing area or the processing chamber. After the manufacturing system is opened, the substrates are loaded into the semiconductor manufacturing system, and the environment within the processing volume of the semiconductor manufacturing system can be altered to match the needed processing environment. At the end of all these steps, the processing of the substrates is started. However, the replacement of the environment with the processing environment in such alternative geometry processing systems could take a significant amount of time, thus decreasing the overall effectiveness and efficiency of the semiconductor manufacturing system.